A tangle of cultures, a tangle of images. Dinh Q. Lê photographic memory fabric

The paper aims to present the issues of post-memory arising from the photographic and video art works of Dinh Q Lę. The specific technique used by the American-Vietnamese artist can be described as “fabric” due to the post-media processing in the form of interwoven photographic strips connected to create an innovative combination dedicated to the connections between East and West, the sacred and the profane, and colour contrasts. Deconstruction of the initial material creates unconventional iconographic combinations that blur the clear meanings recorded in the image, with the aim of their secondary reconfiguration, often marked by traumatic war events. The peculiar form of expression seems to reflect the dynamics of a complex form, ambiguity, and allusion, which is no longer just an automatic reproduction of reality, but a creative field of transformations, weaving, entanglement of threads overlapping various spheres of reference, animation of the meanings of words transformed into moving images that reflect them. The subject of the considerations outlined in this article is an exhibition entitled Dinh Q.Lę. Le fil de la mémoire et autres photographs organised between February 8 and November 20, 2022 at the Musée de Quai Branly.